I have been on a bit of a break for the past week. Well not a break so much as swamped with work, I let slide to the last minute.

One of the reasons is that a week ago I made my annual pilgrimage to the Toronto Indy-car race with my son. This marks about the 20th such trek we have made to this event as a father and son team and given that he is now 33 years old that means we started this tradition when he was in his early teens.

This is our traditional picture from the same place in the stands. Two things have changed in this picture.

The first is that in the early pictures, the CN Tower was clearly visible in the background. For those of you familiar with Toronto you might be able to make it out as it pokes above one of the many condominiums that now define downtown.

The second is my son. The picture is deceiving as he is standing on the row below me so it makes us look about the same height. He passed me in that department many years ago which I suppose is another rite of passage. I won’t actually tell you how much taller he is than I am but let’s just say people are often surprised we are related.

The quote below sums up my feelings about the weekend. Car racing is actually a very strange spectator sport, especially on a street course like Toronto. You only see the cars for about 8 seconds every minute as they whiz by at about 180 mph. It is noisy and on the Saturday, it rained for most of the day. Oh yea did I mention it is a three-day.

However, it is a tradition and as the folks at MasterCard like to remind us, the memories are priceless, even if the beer costs $10!